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Warlock/Cataclysm changes
Cataclysm changes Unexpected addition Soul Shards General preview (level 81): Quick-hitting spell dealing Shadowfire damage. This is similar to the mage ability , in that the lower of the two resistances (in this case shadow and fire) on your target will be used for calculating its damage. Additionally, Fel Flame refreshes the duration of and . Our goal for Fel Flame is to provide a spell that's good for mobility and for use by Destruction and Demonology specs. Also, did we mention it uses green fire? Yep. Instant cast. (level 83): Increases the target's chance for a critical effect with periodic damage or healing spells by 3%. When the target lands a crit, you get a buff to your damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to three times. [Demon Soul] (level 85): Fuses the warlock's soul with his or her demon. This provides warlocks with a self-burst cooldown to use. The specific effects granted by Demon Soul depend on the demon chosen. Demon Soul lasts for a certain number of charges or until it expires (around 20 seconds), depending on the demon used. 2-minute cooldown. Soul Shard Overhaul This major change regarding Soul Shards was previously announced at BlizzCon 2009. Soul Shards will no longer be inventory items, but instead a new UI resource mechanic. Warlocks will have 3 Soul Shards that can be used during a fight and will not be able to gain additional shards during combat. Soul Shards will not be required outside of combat. will consume a Soul Shard resource, thereby allowing you to use the secondary effects of some spells. Soulburn has no mana or health costs and is off the global cooldown. Planned secondary effects are outlined here. *Summon Demon + Soulburn = summon the demon instantly. * + Soulburn = Reduces cast speed by 60%. * + Soulburn = Increases movement speed by 50% for 8 seconds after teleporting. * + Soulburn = Instantly deals damage equal to 30% of its effect. * + Soulburn = Instant cast. * + Soulburn = Increases total health by 20% for 8 seconds. * + Soulburn = Increases the crit chance of Searing Pain by 100%, and subsequent Searing Pain spells by 50% for 6 seconds. Next you will find a list of some of the warlock spell and talent changes for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals. Changes to Abilities and Mechanics *All warlock damage-over-time (DoT) spells will benefit from crit and haste innately. Haste will no longer act to reduce the DoT's duration, but rather to add additional ticks. When reapplying a DoT, you can no longer "clip" the final tick. Instead, this will just add duration to the spell, similar to how currently works. * and will be converted into and . Bane spells are considered magic instead of curses. This means you will be able to cast one Bane (e.g. Bane of Agony) and one Curse (e.g. ) on a single target. * will no longer deal damage to the warlock. *Imps will lose , but will gain a new ability, , which is a stacking DoT. *The succubus melee range will be increased. The succubus will no longer have , but will instead have , which knocks back all enemies within 8 yards. *Voidwalker will do increased damage and generate a lot of area-of-effect (AoE) threat. will become a single-target taunt. New Talents and Talent Changes * will now cause to refresh Unstable Affliction and Bane of Agony on targets below 25% health. *The ability will be removed (because Soulburn accomplishes the same effect). *Demonology will gain a new direct-damage spell, . Demon Bolt will add a debuff that improves the damage done by the demon to the target. *We plan to add a new talent, , which will give certain spells a chance to reduce the cooldown on and Bane of Doom. *Metamorphosis will no longer be subject to demonic crowd control. Furthermore, abilities available only while under the effects of Metamorphosis will be altered to put more emphasis on the warlock's own spells. * will now do additional damage to targets below 25% health. Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses ;Affliction #Spell Damage #Spell Crit #Shadow DoTs: The damage caused by Shadow damage-over-time spells is increased. ;Demonology #Spell Damage #Spell Haste #Demon Damage: The damage caused by pets and Metamorphosis is increased. ;Destruction #Spell Damage #Spell Critical Damage #Fire Direct Damage: The damage caused by Fire direct damage spells is increased. Well that concludes this Cataclysm preview for the warlock class. The development of these changes will continue to evolve in the coming months. Please be sure to provide any feedback and thoughts you might have on what was covered here. }} Clarifications -like spell to bring them back again. These are supposed to be special moments in a fight -- think perhaps -- and not used every 20 seconds on cooldown (or whatever the cooldown ends up being). * Demon lovers, we haven’t ruled out adding a new demon, but we want to be very careful here. We’ve had a hard enough time finding niches for some of the current ones. So we first want to make sure existing demons are cool before we’re faced with Q&A several months from now asking why the new demon either isn’t cool enough, or why warlocks no longer use, say, their felhunter because of the new demon. * The intent for is for it to be a specialty of Demonology warlocks. Affliction would use and Destruction would use . *Succubus details: **Whiplash works similar to Freeze on the mage’s Water Elemental. It requires a targeting reticule. It isn’t just a melee ability that the succubus uses at-will. **As a clarification, we are removing Soothing Kiss, not . Soothing Kiss increased the chance the target would attack something else. Seduction is the crowd control more commonly associated with the Succubus, and it’s not going anywhere. ;) * We did mean to cover doomguards and infernals, but they didn't make it into our preview. Our plan is that you can summon a doomguard or infernal as a cooldown-based pet, much like the shaman elementals, without having to give up your current, permanent demon. If we add a new demon it will likely be one of these cooldown-based ones, and not a permanent pet like the imp, voidwalker, succubus, felguard or felhunter. We’re just not convinced there is a niche for a new permanent demon (and perhaps not even a temporary one). * Flying mounts and female Metamorphosis forms are great ideas and something we’ve had on the wish list for a long time. We can only create so many new creatures during a single expansion, and getting one of these might mean fewer new creatures in outdoor worlds or dungeons. It’s just a trade-off and sometimes you have to make hard calls. We’ll keep them on the list though. * We do like the idea of allowing warlocks to re-skin their demons and have been talking about possible ways to implement this. I have no concrete information for you at this time beyond that. * When it comes to naming demons, this has always been one of those sacred cows, where the hunter gets to name their pet because he loves his pet bear, but the warlock considers the demon to be something disposable -- a tool. * The Demon Bolt debuff will only affect the warlock's demon, not other demons. We wanted a Demo-themed nuke that made it feel like the pet was part of the damage. * For Soul Shard bags, we will probably do something like remove all the shards, reduce the bag size (a little) and convert it to a normal bag. This would be a one-time conversion. We'll probably get rid of the recipes, as we wouldn't want other classes to go out and get shard bags just to get a free bag. }}